For the next three days, Giants fans are Dodger fans

One of my Twitter followers asked a question that surely has vexed fans at times.

Tonight, the third-place Dodgers open a three-game series at Petco Park against the first-place Padres. The Giants are in the middle. So which team should Giants fans root for?

First of all, if the Giants keep winning (which will be tough tonight against Josh Johnson), it really doesn’t matter what the other teams do. But if I had to pick one over the other, I’d say root for the Dodgers.

The first reason is obvious. Anything that moves the Giants closer to first place is good. You want to knock off the king before you worry about one of your sons challenging you for the throne.

A corollary: I think the Giants match up better with the Dodgers this year. The Giants simply don’t play well against the Padres, and I think if the Padres falter the Giants have a better shot going head-to-head with the Doggies.

I’ve also been asked if I think the Padres will falter. I can’t predict that, but if I were a San Diego fan I’d be worried about the experience of that rotation down the stretch. Mat Latos is their best pitcher, but he’s had 163 big-league innings. Clayton Richard has not pitched more than 153 innings in a season. Kevin Correia did pitch 198 innings last year, but largely he is a six-inning pitcher. Get the idea?

The Giants have that issue with Madison Bumgarner, but Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Barry Zito all know how to eat innings. Jonathan Sanchez is a wild card.

Cain gets the ball tonight. The pressure on him is to keep the score low and hope the Giants can KO Johnson, who has not allowed more than two runs in any of his last 13 starts. That strategy worked last night against Ricky Nolasco, and the Giants made a comeback against the Marlins bullpen that was undermined by the run that Guillermo Mota allowed in the eighth.

And, yes, I agree that Edgar Renteria’s bat looked slow last night. But I’m not going to dog him for swinging at Leo Nunez’s 3-2 slider in the dirt to the end the game. It’s easy to look at that pitch on TV and say he shouldn’t have swung, but when you’re standing at the plate and your team is one strike away from being finished, it’s hard to lay off a pitch that starts at your knees then hits the dirt. How about giving Nunez credit for throwing a good pitch?

Robb Nen ended many a game against good hitters with the very same pitch.